Slow Food Nation's Declaration

In celebration of the start of Slow Food Nation, the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture is now available on the web. I wholeheartedly endorse it. You should read it and if you agree endorse it as well.

Following is a draft version of the declaration, which was taken from their site before the official version was unveiled. It was written by people such as Michael Pollan, Mark Winne, and Alice Waters. Need I say more?

We, the undersigned, believe that a healthy food system is necessary to meet the urgent challenges of our time. Behind us stands a half-century of industrial food production, underwritten by cheap fossil fuels, abundant land and water resources, and a drive to maximize the global harvest of cheap calories. Ahead lie rising energy and food costs, a changing climate, declining water supplies, a growing population, and the paradox of widespread hunger and obesity.

These realities call for a radically different approach to food and agriculture. We believe that the food system must be reorganized on a foundation of health: for our communities, for people, for animals, and for the natural world. The quality of food, and not just its quantity, ought to guide our agriculture. The ways we grow, distribute, and prepare food should celebrate our various cultures and our shared humanity, providing not only sustenance, but justice, beauty and pleasure.

Governments have a duty to protect people from malnutrition, unsafe food, and exploitation, and to protect the land and water on which we depend from degradation. Individuals, producers, and organizations have a duty to create regional systems that can provide healthy food for their communities. We all have a duty to respect and honor the laborers of the land without whom we could not survive. The changes we call for here have begun, but the time has come to accelerate the transformation of our food and agriculture and make its benefits available to all.

We believe that the following twelve principles should frame food and agriculture policy, to ensure that it will contribute to the health and wealth of the nation and the world. A healthy food and agriculture policy:

1. Forms the foundation of secure and prosperous societies, healthy communities, and healthy people.

2. Provides access to affordable, nutritious food to everyone.

3. Prevents the exploitation of farmers, workers, and natural resources; the domination of genomes and markets; and the cruel treatment of animals, by any nation, corporation or individual.

4. Upholds the dignity, safety, and quality of life for all who work to feed us.

5. Commits resources to teach children the skills and knowledge essential to food production, preparation, nutrition, and enjoyment.

6. Protects the finite resources of productive soils, fresh water, and biological diversity.

7. Strives to remove fossil fuel from every link in the food chain and replace it with renewable resources and energy.

8. Originates from a biological rather than an industrial framework.

9. Fosters diversity in all its relevant forms: diversity of domestic and wild species; diversity of foods, flavors and traditions; diversity of ownership.

10. Requires a national dialog concerning technologies used in production, and allows regions to adopt their own respective guidelines on such matters.

11. Enforces transparency so that citizens know how their food is produced, where it comes from, and what it contains.

12. Promotes economic structures and supports programs to nurture the development of just and sustainable regional farm and food networks.

Our pursuit of healthy food and agriculture unites us as people and as communities, across geographic boundaries, and social and economic lines. We pledge our votes, our purchases, our creativity, and our energies to this urgent cause.

New Toys and Gardening

Home Despot sent me a 10% off coupon and I used it this morning to replace my old DeWalt cordless drill with a new 14.6 volt one. I also bought a hand held grinder and cut off tool to do some adjustments on the deck awning to accommodate the new awning which is just slightly smaller than the old, original one. Going to play with the new tools and get some chores done. Madam will be pleased and I will receive much praise for having the new awning up when she gets home and with luck there will be no mention of the $200 bucks I dropped at HD this morning.

The rain and now sun has stimulated the garden in a big way. The radishes need to be thinned and the peas need some support as they grew over an inch last night and at this rate will want something to grow on in a few days. Since I have no urgent work type work I will take this opportunity to get it all done. I found some neat plastic fencing at HD that will be perfect for the support and a bonus is it is green and made from recycled stuff. Cool!

Oh, and the DeWalt rep was in the store this morning and in addition to guiding me to best deal on the tools he gave me a nice set of assorted bits and drivers for buying some his tools. Nice!

Except for dropping a new roll of toilet paper in the toilet this morning everything is going well so far. And yes, I politely declined the proferred tube steak at the store entrance this morning.

Still Raining Off and On

But that's good! Some of the seeds I planted Saturday afternoon have found they like the constant water. The radishes are an inch high already...I think I actually can see them grow! The snow peas are just before popping out of the ground as are the sugar snaps. No sign of the carrots but they are awful tiny seeds.
Did a pretty good job at Whole Foods today on the mid week shopping. Locally grown apples and white peaches(gloriously sweet). Locally produced eggs and milk. No meat that meets my requirements available so it is veggie night tonight. A few tomatoes left and a couple of peppers from the garden so it may just be rabbit food. There is always pasta but I am trying to seriously limit my carbs right now. I kind of overdid the croissants and bread while in France and I need to get my blood sugar back in control.

Hillary Rocked

I couldn't stay awake to watch Hillary last night but I just finished watching her speech this morning. Absolutely perfect and exactly the speech she needed to give. I would have been happy to support her candidacy and the speech shows why. Now we need to do as she says and support Obama.

Update: I been thinking..yeah I know I shouldn't strain myself...but I have been asking myself what really did Hillary in. She and her crew, she could have done a better job with staff, made some serious gaffs but not enough I believe to sink her. I think if she had voted against the Authorization to Use Force in Iraq she would have been the Democratic nominee today.

Choose The Positive

I feel the need to follow up on my screed below, It Ain’t Pretty. Some of the feedback, both in comments and email, has given me the impression that some may think the situation is hopeless and that we are all doomed regardless of our choices in the ballot box. While I was trying to be realistic and firmly believe everything I said in the post I am not giving up. On the contrary, I believe that the better we understand the position we and the rest of the world are in the more effectively we can make the changes needed to secure a better future for us all.

We can see the enemy and yes “enemy” is the correct word. The sad truth of the matter is best acknowledged by repeating the most famous of lines from Walt Kelly’s brilliant comic strip Pogo "we have met the enemy and he is us." Yes, we are the enemy but we are the saviors as well.

All of the problems and challenges we are facing are the result of our own failures as responsible participants in the dance of life and as such can be corrected by addressing our failures.
The good news is that we are already seeing the tide shift. More and more of us are taking to heart the knowledge that we are not just individuals “doing our own thing” but instead part of a greater whole. There is increased awareness that our individual small actions of waste are each contributing to the degradation of our environment. More and more of us are recycling, looking for local food and organic options at the market. More and more of us are seeing that the war, aggression, poverty, lack of health care and hunger affecting any of us is affecting us all. We are beginning to recognize that each of us is part of a larger world and that what affects one affects all. We are beginning to understand that the gospel of man’s dominion over nature is a lie and that man is directly and intimately connected to the world and that ignoring Gaia and our connection with her is done at our peril.

So, yes our country and our world is currently being ravaged in the ever increasing search for growth at all costs. Our lives are slowly being poisoned by the global corporations in search of short term profit, the legacy be damned and yes our leadership and our government is very nearly wholly owned by these same corporate masters. But, again the good news is that we are becoming aware of exactly how we are being used and abused by these global hegemonies and it is much to their chagrin that we are. We are coming to realize that we are letting them lead us to ruin and we are beginning to look and find ways to cheat them of their dominion. We let them lead us this far down the road to doom but we do not have to continue to blindly follow. Each of us has dozens of chances each day to strike out on a different path. Each of us has the ability to say no every time we are asked to take a step down the path to our own destruction. You can say no to war. You can say no to continued dependence on oil. You can say no to continued subsidies to giant agribusiness. You can say no to the refusal to address national healthcare. You can say no to every item in your grocery that is full of High Fructose Corn Syrup and the hundreds of other manufactured poisons that we are being told is food. You can say no to the beef, pork and chicken in the grocery that has been tortured and poisoned so that you can have cheap and unhealthy meat.

The giant corporations that are killing us and imprisoning us with our dependence on unhealthy food, useless products, clothes made with slave labor in some foreign country by our brothers and sisters and tying us to them with a dependence on cheap energy live by your dollar and nothing else. Deprive them of their source of power and we will win the battle for our future and free ourselves in the process.

We have been fed a giant lie and we have bought it completely. It is a lie that we can continue to grow, continue to consume with abandon and not pay a price. Our planet can sustain us all but not at an ever increasing pace of consumption and waste. We have to find the balance and it will demand from each of us some sacrifice. It will not, however, demand us to sacrifice peace, our humanity, or our place in the universe. We can live within the limits the universe sets on us but we do have to make the choice to do so.

So the last word is vote. Not only at the ballot box but in every choice you make each day. Choose to say no the status quo. Choose to say yes to change for the better. Choose the positive. Finally, remember always that if it wasn’t food when your Grand Mother was a little girl then there is a good chance it is not food today.

What's Left of Fay

What's left of Fay is making a big impression in these parts. It is currently raining buckets and we are under a tornado and flash flood warning. I can ignore the flood warning as I am at the highest place in the county but I'm going to keep my ear out for the sirens just in case. I don't have to go out it in it and I won't. There are some very wet squirrels, birds and bunnies cruising the back yard right now.

Special Request

I am relaying a special request from the Department of Homeland Security.

To all Terrorists and Potential Terrorists;

Due to recent problems with our Terrorists database which surely had your name in it, probably. We are pleased to announce that one of our highly paid consultants has managed to get a copy of MS Access running on our system. We are asking each of you to please re-register at your earliest convenience.

Thank you,
Your DHS Data Team.

It Ain't Pretty

Here we are on the first day of the Democratic National Convention where we Democrats will anoint Barack Hussein Obama as our candidate for President. It’s as good a day as any and maybe even better than most to remind ourselves of one very fundamental thing. America is now a totalitarian state and the elections are an illusion.

If you don’t believe me try looking around you and really seeing what the American dream has become. Look beyond the “shiny” stuff, the glitzy cars and Iphones. Look beyond the fundamentally meaningless commercial "circle-jerk". Look beyond all the energy and lives being wasted and dedicated to making the almighty profit and producing nothing of lasting value. Look beyond every shelf in your grocery store and the chemical and poison laden bottles and boxes there that our corporate owners tell us is our food. Look beyond the millions and millions of pounds of landfill that we import daily from across the globe. Ask yourself which God we truly honor in this country and you will see that is the economy. Not the economy defined as a successful and happy people. Not the economy defined as a healthy people. Not the economy defined as a people with a secure future but the economy defined by our corporate masters as one of profit and growth at all costs. Pause and ask yourself why it is necessary for our corporate owned state to increasingly police us and spy on us. Ask yourself why it is necessary for Americans to represent 25 percent of the world’s prison population while we only represent 6 percent of the earth’s population.

As I said above and how I truly wish it were not so, the elections are an illusion. The corporate trusts and the government which they own dearly love elections. Elections give us all the illusion that we have a choice. Elections make “We the People” think we actually have some say in how we live and what our future holds. Elections give the rubes an illusion of control over their lives. Elections keep us deflected for a while and away from actually looking at the sorry state we are in. Look at the reality and know that if elections truly mattered and we really had some choice how things would be. We would have a fair comprehensive national health care plan. We would not be spending huge sums on a military larger than the rest of the worlds combined. We surely wouldn’t be at war. We would surely have healthy and wholesome food for ourselves and our children. We would surely be looking at a positive future for our children instead of one dying in our own poisons. The hard reality is that America is already a second class nation, no health care, no real guarantee of a future any different than a continuing and increasingly difficult struggle with one another for a decent job and/or enough money so as not to starve and keep some semblance of roof over our heads. Except for a very small percentage of wealthy Americans there is no future of comfort, freedom or security.

And so here we are and with our illusion of the big "debate" between Obama and McCain. More simply it is really an emotional drama of "good guy" versus "bad guy" hidden in a plethora of fundamentally non-issues like taxes, half-assed healthcare, whether we should stop the insanity of war, whether we should stop poisoning ourselves and on and on. The real issues are global and ecological and not local to our own little part of the universe. However the capitalists who sponsor both the candidates don’t want the discussion to deal with the truth. Having an open debate about the disappearance of our fundamental resources or the fact that our extravagantly wasteful American lifestyle must dramatically change if we are to survive will hurt profits. Goddess forbid that the notion of an inexhaustible world of resources and constant "economic growth" is ever challenged by the reality of survival of the species.

So yeah, I will cast my vote for Obama and Biden. But as I do so I will do so with the knowledge that in the current state of affairs and in spite of Obama’s best efforts or intentions that, sooner or later, the American and maybe even the world economy will collapse completely. I’m going with Obama because I think he is less likely to attack some other nation just for the hell of it and on the whole I think he is the smarter of the two. I am, however, not fooled into believing that there are two or more political parties from which to choose. There is only one party and that is the party of big business just wearing multiple masks. Look behind the masks and you will find big agriculture, big chemical, big coal, big oil, big defense, big finance or big something else.

For lack of a better way of saying it, We Americans are in for a “Come to Jesus Moment”. We are on the brink, be it years or decades, from serious social and financial collapse. The millions of homes currently in foreclosure are a symptom. The soaring national debt is a symptom. The millions of Americans without health care is a symptom. The lack of available nutritious food is a symptom. The increasing demand for more oil and cheaper oil is a symptom and there are hundreds more. The fact that millions of us are actually paying more for water than gasoline is a symptom. Most Americans cannot believe that this can happen and a terrible level of disaster will be required before most will come to the realization that something is deeply wrong with their nation and in many ways the world as it is. We are probably a decade or more away from this collapse but it will happen. There is no way the current level of growth and resource depletion can continue. Don’t expect any of the candidates to seriously address these issues in the coming months because to do so is political suicide. All we can do is vote and hope and continue to push for meaningful change in our own individual ways.

Don’t forget to vote!

Update: I should really mention that some of this is or has been triggered by recent posts by Joe Bageant heterodyned with Michael Pollan and others.

Rains Here

Finally getting some serious rain from TS Fay. Real frog strangler going on right now at 830p and enough to block part of the satellite TV signal. Few showers today but nothing to right home about but this one is going strong. The Sugar Snap(mangetout) peas, Snow Peas, carrots and radishes I planted yesterday are enjoying a nice drink and this will surely wake them and get them going. I can just see them now...snuggling down in the soil and soaking up the water and thinking "show time!".

Nice Sunday meal today with the daughter and son-in-law. Just as I threatened, along with the Poulet Rouge I served fried green tomatoes. Believe it or not SIL had never eaten any and he claims to be a southern boy. Never mind, he is anointed now and has added FGT to his repertoire. Daughter still won't eat them but if you heat a vegetable it is verbotten in her book. The rest of the menu consisted of butter peas and buttermilk cornbread with deep dish apple pie and ice cream for dessert. BTW the red chicken was very nice and well worth the trouble to acquire. Yes, there was less breast meat than on an industrial chicken but the thighs were bigger and the legs as well. Most of all it tasted remarkedly like chicken!

Can't believe its another Monday tomorrow...if I don't see you before breakfast, help yourself to a croissant. ( excuse the serving dish it was a bit primitive in the farmhouse)

Weekend Rambles

Just a light sprinkle early this morning from Fay. Sure would like to relieve some you Redneck Riviera of some of that rain. We need it in the worst way. Doesn't look like there will be enough rain or whatever to keep me out of the garden today. Been overcast and windy for the last two days and I keep expecting something only to be disappointed.

The mouthbreathers have appeared in the neighborhood as I say two McSame signs in yards this morning on my walk. Didn't notice them yesterday. Don't these people know that these signs for McAncient are just like putting up a sign in the yard that says "I'm stupid and proud of it!"?

Got up early this morning and went to Whole Foods to try and score a Poulet Rouge Fermier. They only get a few each Friday from the grower and they go quickly. Lucked out this morning as I got one of the remaining three. You can check out the link above but they are a heritage breed from France and are grown in as close to a "free-range" environment as you are likely to find unless you grow your own or your neighbor does. From what I have been able to ascertain these folks get as close as is possible in today's industrial food business to getting it right. The chickens sure do taste a lot better than even the premium "Rosie" chickens now showing up in the markets.

Going to pull up all the tomatoes and put in my fall garden this weekend. There are still a few green tomatoes hanging on but not enough to worry about and besides one has to have at least one batch of Fried Green Tomatoes in a summer. Maybe with the red chicken tomorrow.

Started the other book I bought for the trip yesterday...Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, I have read his previous The Power of Now and thought it worthwhile. My only argument with him is that he makes tackling your ego sound like some kind of simple intellectual excercise instead of the lifelong experience it actually is. Nevermind...if it gets people thinking about the subject of overcoming our ego's and actually moving in that direction I have no problem with it. The reality is that he is making me refocus and that is something I need with the world in the state it is in. It seems everything out there is trying to reinforce the false, ego driven state. This can't hurt.

Hope all you folks in the Florida panhandle have your pants rolled up and your storm kits stocked. Be safe.

Incompetence Cubed

Not only are we drowning in misguided and ineffective attempts at national security but the tools the idiots in charge are using are making the failures more rapidly reachable. Contractors, who are obviously completely incompetent, are making millions of dollars on a completely useless database system. Read this from the Wall Street Journal and if doesn't make you cry or laugh then I worry. Here are a few choice bits....

The government's main terrorist-watch-list system is hobbled by technology challenges, and the $500 million program designed to upgrade it is on the verge of collapse, according to a preliminary congressional investigation.

The database, which includes an estimated 400,000 people and as many as 1 million names, has been criticized for flagging ordinary Americans. Now, the congressional report finds that the system has problems identifying true potential terrorists, as well.

[snip]

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of "potentially vital" messages from the Central Intelligence Agency have not been included in the database, known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, congressional investigators found.

[snip]

The current system "has been crippled by technical flaws" and the system designed to replace it, dubbed Railhead, "if actually deployed, will leave our country more vulnerable than the existing yet flawed system today," Rep. Miller wrote.

[snip]

Railhead was supposed to be completed by year's end but has been delayed. Nearly half of the 72 so-called "action items" for the program were delayed as of June, congressional investigators found.

In recent weeks, the government has fired most of the 862 private contractors from dozens of companies working on the Railhead project, and only a skeleton crew remains, one congressional aide said. The two leading contractors on the program are Boeing Co. and SRI International. Calls to officials of Boeing and SRI were not immediately returned.

862 private contractors doing database development and not one of them capable of doing a web search on search engines? None of them have ever heard of Google? This kind of information is not very hard to find. Jeebus how much money has been paid for this cock-up?